Several authors have commented on my reductionist account of spirituality in nursing, describing it variously as naïve, disrespectful, demeaning, paternalistic, arrogant, reifying, indicative of a closed mind, akin to positivism, a procrustean bed, a perpetuation of fraud, a matter of faith, an attempt to secure ideological power, and a perspective that puritanically forbids interesting philosophical topics. In responding to this list of felonies and misdemeanours, I try to justify my excesses by arguing that the critics have not really understood what (...) reductionism involves; that rejecting reductionism is not the same as providing arguments against it; that the ethical dilemmas allegedly associated with reductionist views are endemic to health care; that 'reifying' is what believers in the spiritual realm do; and that the closed minds belong to those who dismiss reductionist science without having studied its achievements. (shrink)

This article has its origins in a 2013 proposal by the author that the concept of ‘spiritual care’ in clinical settings might fruitfully be grounded in the findings of the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). In a recent paper, John Paley rejects the central arguments and asserts his conviction that a model for ‘spiritual care’ cannot be derived from the insights of evolutionary psychology. In this article, the author employs a modified form of Fichtean dialectic to examine the contrasting positions (...) and, via a process of analysis and synthesis, identify the key areas for further exploration and research. He concludes, first, that CSR in itself does not provide a sufficient theoretical justification for the notion and practice of ‘spiritual care’; secondly, that any attempt to develop a general theory of spiritual care would need to pay closer attention to the role of historically situated religious communities; and finally, that these objections nevertheless do not amount to an argument against the attempt to provide spiritual care as part of person‐centred care. Instead, a revised model is proposed which has the potential to provide testable predictions in this field. (shrink)